We mocked up the bike and found that the front forks needed to be shortened 80 mm to get the right stance. Rather than shortening the inner tubes, we took 80 mm out of the damper, so the travel is shorter. If we had taken this much off the inner tubes the sliders would have hit the lower tree on every bump.

The damper was brazed together so some heat was applied to take it apart. After shortening the dampertube the end was re-machined to the correct inner diameter and the threaded insert was brazed back on using silver. This bike will be riding loooooooooow....